She Goes Extra Mile for Hockey

When Mandy Reed of Newport Beach would tell her friends that her daughter was playing ice hockey, she said they usually had one question: “But what about her teeth?”

Well, they can rest assured that Liz Reed still has all her teeth--contrary to that hockey stereotype--and she has been playing high-level youth hockey for seven years, part of the time in a league with boys.

She’s good enough to have played the last five years for California Select, a girls’ all-star team that finished second in its age division in last year’s USA girls’/women’s national championships at Disney Ice.

And beginning Monday, Reed and two other Orange County players will be competing for the Pacific all-star team in a major national event, Hockey Night in Boston’s Girls Summer Showcase. Cherie Stewart of Lake Forest and Naho Tajima of Huntington Beach are also members of the Pacific team.

This is the first time a West Coast team has been entered in the event, which continues through Aug. 22 at Merrimack College in North Andover, Mass. Seven other regional all-star teams will compete.

Reed, 18, will be playing in the event for the second time. She played a year ago after trying out and being selected for the Midwest team, which lost in the final, 1-0, in two overtimes.

Reed will go just about anywhere to play good hockey.

After attending Santa Margarita High for two years, she spent the next two years at Pomfret, a private prep school in Connecticut that has an outstanding girls’ hockey program.

“Playing Division I hockey has always been my goal,” she said. “There are a lot of really good college programs in the East, and I felt that playing in the prep school league there would help me get ready for that, as well as help me academically.”

Her passion for the sport began in grade school, playing roller hockey in her neighborhood. She went from there to a roller hockey league, and then on to playing ice hockey.

“She loved ice hockey right from the start,” her mother said. “She tried out for a boys’ traveling team in Huntington Beach, and made that. She was the only girl playing in several of those tournaments.”

Reed said she has never thought the sport was dangerous, even when she played against boys.

“I’m not saying there aren’t injuries, but you wear a face mask and a mouthpiece and there’s no body-checking in girls’ hockey,” she said. “It’s not like you’re getting thrown against the boards all the time.”

But, against boys, Reed said she was more cautious about skating into the corners where there was a greater chance of being slammed into the boards.

“I think there’s more finesse and tactical hockey in the girls’ game without body-checking,” she said. “You can skate more with the puck, and you have more time to be able to do things. I think you get to see people’s skills more in our game. It teaches you to be really focused. But it probably is one of the most physical of the sports for girls.”

Reed normally plays one of the wing positions and takes pride in her tenacity. “I’m a gritty kind of player,” she said. “When I score, the goals aren’t always pretty. I usually have to work hard for them.”

Stewart, a 16-year-old who joined the California Select team this season, says she’s happy to be on the same line with Reed.

“She’s really good,” Stewart said. “She makes everything look easy, the way she moves the puck around so well. She has helped me a lot.”

Reed has one more year at Pomfret before she attends college, but she and her father, Jim, have been visiting several schools in the East this past week before the start of the Summer Showcase. She says she hasn’t decided which one she will attend.

“But I think I’ll be more prepared for college after being on my own a lot these last two years,” she said. “It’s been a positive thing. I think it’s made me more mature.’